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Wednesday, 13 March 2013

Europe bans animal testing of cosmetics

Animal testing of cosmetics is now banned in Europe! This is great news and certainly something worth celebrating. However, there is still some way to go if all animal testing is to be ended. The current ban doesn't extend to ingredients
testing, which falls under a piece of outdated legislation called REACH.

In principle, REACH is a good piece of legislation. REACH rules tell a company exactly which tests they
need to do for each ingredient – it lists the non-animal tests
that must be used and then the animal tests to be used if there
is no alternative. The rules were supposed to be updated regularly to add any
new non-animal alternatives as they are developed. It was hoped that
eventually this would mean that no animal tests were ever needed, as new non-animal tests are developed over time.

The bad news is REACH
has not been updated since it was written in 2007. Since then many
non-animal alternatives have been developed and also some animal test
refinements (which mean that fewer animals need to be used and killed). By not adding these to the
REACH testing guidelines, REACH are breaking their own rules –
and many animals (perhaps even millions) are dying in tests because
companies cannot use the non-animal alternatives until the legislation
lists them as suitable for use.

PM Doolan - I think it's finished products (eg an eyeshadow) vs the ingredients that go into that finished product. It is confusing though and the recent media reports haven't helped, because often they tend to focus on only one element.

That's good news. It doesn't seem right to use animals for testing but I was never sure what the alternatives were.I just googled to learn that there are methods to test products that work just as well as using animals. In some cases testing is done when it's not even necessary. It just comes down to money.